A Monologue with the Æther

On the Confederacy and Its Battle Flag

Defending the Confederacy and/or its symbols, by pointing out the flaws of the
United States is an informal fallacy: tu quoque, attempting to refute
a position by pointing out its hypocrisy. In short, one is arguing that the
Confederacy’s raison d’être is okay because the United States also has blood
on its hands. Let us be clear, the States forming the Confederacy seceded
because they wished to preserve the institution and practice of slavery. You,
dear reader, needn’t take my word for it feel free to read the declarations of
secession of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and
Texas; not to mention, that the Confederate Constitution is quite
clear about the importance of slavery in its mission.

By and large, the same persons that defend the Confederacy as not being about
slavery are the same ones who deny the existence and lasting effects of the
darker side of US history: slavery, Jim Crow, genocide of the indigenous
population, subordination of labor to capital, etc. (this list is
non-exhaustive and merely points out the crimes that were largely concurrent
with the American Civil War era). The prime difference between flying the US
flag despite its crimes and flying the Confederate flag is that the Confederacy
existed because and stood in defense of “the peculiar institution”.

The US on the other hand despite the best intentions of its propertied masters,
alias the Founding Fathers, accidentally conceived a nation founded on an
idealistic principle of equality for all which causes its People to act in such
a way as to attempt to actually create such a society.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Author’s note: This post began life as a comment on a Facebook post.
I decided given the number of posts and commentary on the issue of the
Confederacy and its battle flag all over the internet to expand on it and make
it an article.